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ABOUT THIS IMAGE:

Detailed analyses of mankind's deepest optical view of the universe, the
Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), by several expert teams have at last
identified what may turn out to be some of the earliest star-forming
galaxies. The sensitivity of Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS),
combined with the penetrating power of the Near Infrared Camera and
Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS), finally revealed these long-sought faint galaxies. The HUDF shows that close to a billion years after the
big bang the early universe was filled with dwarf galaxies, but no fully
formed galaxies like our Milky Way. After careful analysis, they have
been sorted out as between 54 and 108 dim, red smudges sprinkled across
the HUDF image. This image shows the full sample of candidates circled
in green. Three enlargements at right show several dwarf objects that
are at the limits of Hubble's present instrument capabilities. The HUDF
is a small region of sky in the direction of the southern constellation
Fornax. The faintest objects are less than one four-billionth the
brightness of stars that can be seen with the naked eye. Their light has
taken nearly 13 billion years to reach Earth, and so these objects represent
some of the earliest star-forming galaxies to form in the universe.